An in silico Surgical Drilling Protocol to Rehearse and Practice for Bone Fracture Fixation and Reconstruction Surgery

Abstract

Orthopaedic surgery is a branch that normally deals with the treatment of bone fracture and reconstruction of broken bones. Machining processes such as grinding, sawing, milling, reaming, and drilling are widely used in orthopaedic surgeries. However, compared with other machining processes, drilling is most widely used to make holes through bone for the fixation of plates and implants. The main goal for the surgeons when drilling through bone is to make accurate holes without causing any mechanical and/or thermal damages to the surrounding tissues. Study showed that the unrestrained thrust forces generated in bone drilling operations result in drill-bit breakage, mechanical damages to the local host bone and thermal osteonecrosis around the surgical bone site, which further lead to loosening of implant and fixations. newlineSo, surgical drilling operations with suitable process parameter values are essential for the success of the surgeries. Although, experimental investigations on bone drilling were widely performed by researchers, the effect of all the possible combinations of parameter values on thrust force, torque and temperature are largely limited in practice. This is because of the requirement for the too many experimental runs, investment towards the equipment in addition to the risk of infections in handling the bone specimens. Study showed that the empirical models currently available for bone drilling were not included the effect of drill bit geometry for the accurate prediction of the thrust force and torque. Whereas, in the analytical models the effect of drill bit indentation was not included. Owing to the restriction of the model only for the tested range of the parameters, both the empirical and regression models are largely limited.